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Another amazing commission by Jetfreak-7! A US B-1 Lancer bomber, taken out by two Venezuelan F-16 Fighting Falcons. Two US F/A-18 Super Hornets just barely visible in the distance, clearly too late to save their comrades. How did this happen? You'll have to read to find out! It's far from the only thing that happens in the story below. I'll tell you that much.

This is a continuation of my US/Venezuela War series. Previous entry: The Battle of Courantyne

Prelude:

In the weeks following Cucuta and leading up to the attack on the USS Barker, the Venezuelan Air Force prepared for war as best as it could. The Republic of Turkey, the one member of NATO that still officially recognized the Venezuela's Leftist Bolivarian government as legitimate, would secretly provide them with aid.

The Turkish Air Force's main fighter jet was the US made F-16, and so they provided their Venezuelan trading partners with a decent amount of spare parts on the down low (though not ejector seats, which at the time could not be spared). Even though the Bolivarian Air Force still used old A variants of the Falcon, the extra parts were none the less a massive help. For the past several years they'd only been able to field six operational F-16s (out of their total fleet of twenty) due to the US embargo. Now they could field twelve.

In two especially bold and treacherous moves, Turkey secretly provided a handful of old but still reliable AIM-120B AMRAAM missiles and contracted two retired pilots who'd flown Falcons in their air force to instruct the Venezuelan pilots in NATO air to air combat tactics. This was a direct treaty violation, as the Turks were well aware that the Venezuelans would very likely use these missiles and tactics against other member nations of NATO in the near future.

Neither of the Turkish pilots used their real names and both stayed almost exclusively within the confines of El Libertador Air Base during their four week tenure in Venezuela. Plain clothes agents of the Venezuelan General Directorate of Military Intelligence (DGIM) kept a close watch on them the entire time and the two even wore ski masks while they gave lectures to the Bolivarian pilots.

To this day, the identity of the two Turks has never been revealed. All that is known for sure about them is that they were both male, both of average height and both fluent in Spanish. They were hired by a private mercenary firm, supposedly on secret orders form the Turkish government. There was enough plausible deniability to prevent the government connections from ever being proven.

Regardless, all of the Su-30 and F-16 pilots of the Venezuelan Air Force would learn a great deal from the Turkish lectures. They would also get a couple of weeks to actually try the newly learned tactics out in the air with mock dogfights against each other.

Another major boon for Venezuela was the Islamic Republic of Iran. Despite also being under siege by the US, the Iranians still sent a fairly large amount of military personnel and equipment to the Bolivarian Republic. This included several units of the Mersad, Ya Zahra, and Raad surface to air missile systems, plus two long range Talaash batteries. This would bolster Venezuela's own Russian made Pechora, Buk, and Tor systems as well as their three long range S-300 missile systems.

The Iranians also still used a lot of the same Russian missile systems the FANB did, and had a very large surplus of missiles for them. They therefore brought a sizable amount of said Russian missiles to help keep the Venezuelans stocked. Additionally, several hundred fighters from the Quds Force, the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps's elite and infamous unconventional warfare division, were also sent over. There were already fears of a full on US land invasion following the air strikes so any extra bodies on the ground would be a big help.

The Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces sent Venezuela some radar guided 9K33 Osas and inferred guided 9K35 Strelas. Both were highly mobile short range low altitude air defense vehicles. Several hundred Cuban infantry, including special forces, were sent in as well.

Finally, the Volker Group, a paramilitary contractor (officially a privately owned organization but unofficially under direct supervision of the Russian government), sent several thousand highly equipped fighters to Venezuela. They even brought a few dozen 2K22M1 Tunguskas with them, which were a mobile combination of both a self-propelled anti-aircraft gun and short range surface to air missile battery. They would be held back in reserve though, in case the US went all the way and did a full on ground invasion.

In the final days leading up to the war, the FANB (Venezuelan military an a whole), Iranian and Cuban forces quickly mapped out the best places in the country where their SAM batteries would be the most tactically effective. The systems were then rushed to those locations as clandestinely as possible in the hopes of throwing off US satellites.

The Venezuelan Air Force also dispersed its fighter jets. Air Group 11, the eleven Su-30 Flankers under Col. Javiar Lamas who'd attacked the Barker, would remain at El Libertador in Palo Negro (they were also the Air Force's only fighter group equipped with electronic radar jamming pods). The ten Flankers in Air Group 13 would be stationed at Luis del Valle Garcia Air Base in the coastal city of Barcelona.

Eight of the twelve F-16As of Air Group 16 would be set up at Cacique Guaicaipuro Air Base in the remote town of La Esmeralda, Amazonas State. It was the Bolivarian Air Force's Southern most base, abandoned years ago and just refurbished in recent months. The local townsfolk were understandably none too happy about this, as their otherwise backwater community would now become a military target.

The small Southern base had no room for the other four Falcons, so they were divided among the other groups. The two flown by Capt. Ariana Perez and Lt. Rodrigo Tejamas would join with Group 13 at Valle Garcia. The other two, flown by Majors Miguel Soros and Vito Esperanza, both just recently brought out of retirement, would join Group 11 at El Libertador.

The Venezuelans also had an old Dassault Falcon 20 and two old Fairchild C-26 Metroliners for AEW (airborne early warning), the three making up Air Group 86, but they were all using long outdated radar systems. None the less, the three took off from their respective bases on the night of January 6th, their crews doing the best they could to monitor the skies in and around the country.

In the pre-dawn hours of January 7th, 2020, as the most powerful military in human history bared down on them, the various pilots and backseaters of the Bolivarian Air Force of Venezuela said their prayers. Military chaplains spoke with them as well, effectively giving them their last rites.

There was no denying the overwhelming odds against them. There was no denying the fact that the US Air Force and Navy could not actually be stopped. Nearly all of them had resigned themselves to the fact that they were probably about to die. All they could hope for is that they'd take at least a few enemy planes out with them.

“I don't know about the rest of you,” Captain and Cucuta Incident veteran Gregori Escalante quipped in the El Libertador briefing room once the prayers were finished, “but I REALLY want to shoot down an F-15.”

The Captain's attempt to lighten the mood was only moderately successful, but his own relatively high spirits would not be quelled. The US made F-15 Eagle fighter jet and its multi-role strike variant had dominated the world's skies for decades. Not a single one had ever been lost in combat. If Capt. Escalante was going to die today, then he was determined to go out as an Eagle killer. His backseat WSO, Lt. Jose Almeida was right behind him, both literally AND figuratively.

Then word was received from Cuban intelligence. The US fleet was about to begin launching cruise missiles at Venezuela and it was now or never for the Bolivarian Air Force planes to take off.

Despite the lack of hope that most of them still felt, the forty-two Su-30 pilots and weapons systems officers, and the twelve F-16 pilots all suited up, got in their respective planes, taxied onto their runways and took off without hesitation. There had been no time to do pre-flight checks, so the Bolvarian pilots simply had to have faith that their vastly undermanned and overworked crews of mechanics had done everything right.

Just minutes after the last Venezuelan jet got airborne, Operation “Latin Freedom” officially commenced and US destroyers in the Caribbean began launching Tomahawk cruise missiles at El Libertador and other military bases. Additional missiles would be fired by B-52 Stratofortress and B-1 Lancer bombers.

Also, the Brazilian Army would test out their brand new domestically made long range AV-TM 300 Matador cruise missile on Cacique Guaicaipuro. Launched from just over the border, the Matadors hammered the backwater air base, cratering the runway and killing multiple Air Force personnel. A few missiles landed in the surrounding town as well, resulting in civilian casualties.

Back in the North, the combined effort of the Venezuelan and Iranian air defense batteries were able to shoot down a surprisingly large amount of Tomahawks. Many still got through though, devastating El Libertador, the main Bolivarian Naval base at Puerto Cabello and many other military facilities.

While this was going on, the US Navy's Nimitz class aircraft carriers USS George Washington, USS Carl Vinson and USS Theodore Roosevelt began launching their planes. F/A-18 Super Hornets of the one-seat E and two-seat F variants backed up EA-18 Growlers for electronic warfare support. Several E-2 Hawkeye AEW planes were also in the skies over the Caribbean in order to provide the Hornets with a much longer range situational awareness.

Additionally, US Air Force F-15E Strike Eagles from the 4th Fighter Wing and F-16C Falcons from 20th Fighter Wing took off from Pedro Ospina Air Base in Plato, Colombia. An E-3 Sentry AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System) aircraft would guide them in and out.

From a UK Royal Air Force airfield in Western Guyana (built in recent years as part of a new found strategic partnership between the UK and Guyana), RAF Eurofighter Typhoon FGR4s of the No. 6 Squadron and Royal Canadian Air Force CF-18A Hornets from the 401 and 425 Tactical Fighter Squadrons also took off. Another US E-3 Sentry was assigned to them as well.

And of course, from the air base at Boa Vista, Brazilian F-5FM Tiger IIs from the 1/1, 1/4, 1/14 and 2/1 Air Groups and AMX A-1M Ghibis from 1/10 and 3/10 air groups took off and headed Northwest. Although older than Venezuela's Falcons, the Brazilians had spent a lot of time and resources in recent years modernizing their Tiger II fleet, giving them improved avionics and extra weapons pylons to carry more ordinance. The F-5s were still light fighters however, not designed for long range missions, so they had to be refueled in-flight by KC-767 aerial tankers before they entered enemy air space.

In stark contrast to many recent large scale US led air operations such as Desert Storm (the First Gulf War) or Odyssey Dawn (the NATO intervention in Libya), “Latin Freedom” had been severely rushed by the Michael Dorf administration. The pilots of the coalition had received minimal intelligence on the Bolivarian Armed Forces' capabilities and been given very little time to plan their missions. This resulted in many errors and oversights being made. Errors and oversights that the Venezuelan and allied forces (all of which had been attentively observing US military operations for years) would be able to exploit.

Air Group 11 over the Western front:

Not wanting to risk being mistaken for an enemy plane, Majors Soros and Esperanza broke off from Air Group 11 and headed North towards the coastline in their F-16As. The two would end up getting into their famous dogfight with US F/A-18 pilots Gary Yuen and Laura Heidelberg over the Paraguana Peninsula. Soros and Esperanza would both be shot down (with only Soros surviving), and Heidelberg would become the first female US fighter pilot ever to score an air to air kill.

The eleven Su-30s of Group 11 moved to engage the first wave of USAF aircraft coming in from the West, which was an eight-ship flight of F-16Cs with a six-ship flight of F-15Es not far behind them. The F-16s were “Wild Weasels.” Their primary task was to destroy or suppress Venezuelan anti-air defenses but they were equipped to deal with enemy fighters as well.

The two enemy air groups slowly closed on each other, both spread out in a combat formation. The US pilots were initially taken aback by the tenacity and discipline of their Venezuelan adversaries. They'd expected to encounter at most a few small scattered groups of enemy fighters. They most certainly hadn't expected an entire wall of Venezuelan planes to confront them directly.

As the Flankers and Falcons got closer, the respective pilots/crews of each group coordinated with each other to make sure no one attacked the same target. Both groups also increased speed in order to give their long range missiles as much kinetic energy as possible. The Flankers' R-77 Adder missiles had a shorter range and were less reliable than the AIM-120C AMRAAMs the US planes used.

The US F-16s fired first at about thirty-five miles out with their AMRAAMs. To the Falcon pilots' astonishment, the Venezuelan jets held formation for few more moments, determined to get every last bit of kinetic energy the could for their Adders. The Su-30s then fired at about about twenty-eight miles out.

Both air groups took evasive action and the F-16s were forced to prematurely drop their external fuel tanks and air to ground munitions (the latter of course not yet armed). The Su-30 pilots did a surprisingly good job evading the US missiles, in large part thanks to the the techniques passed on to them by the Turks as well as their SAP-518 radar jamming pods. The US pilots were even better trained though and had jamming pods of their own.

Only one plane on each side was shot down in the opening salvos. On the US side was F-16 pilot Jordan Malinowski, the kill credited to Su-30 pilot Eddie Navarro and WSO Pedro Juarez. Malinowski managed to eject safely and land in Colombian territory, though he nearly drowned after landing in the middle of a bog. A passing squad of Colombian soldiers were thankfully able to get him out.

On the Venezuelan side, the Flanker flown by Col. Lamas and Maj. de Pablo was shot down, the kill credited to F-16 pilot Ray Nealy. Lamas and de Pablo both ejected, but the former was mortally wounded by shrapnel from the missile hit. Lamas sadly bled out and was dead before he hit ground. De Pablo would not find his body until well after sunup.

Another F-16, this one flown by Lt. Rebecca Mok, would also suffer from terrible luck. After having managed to successfully notch and defeat the R-77 missile that was fired at her, Mok was flying exceptionally low and inadvertently stumbled into the engagement zone of a Cuban Osa. The Osa (commonly referred to as a “Gecko” by NATO militaries) then preceded to fire an 9M33M3 missile at the low flying F-16 which hit.

Lt. Mok quickly ejected, just barely high enough so that her parachute could open fully before she hit the ground. Before she could unhook her chute and get her bearings however, she was apprehended by a Bolivarian militia patrol. The Lieutenant became the first US prisoner to be taken during the conflict. This incident also marked the first time an 9K33 Osa successfully shot down a jet aircraft in combat.

Back in the air, the situation was quickly turning into a furball, with the Flankers and outnumbered Falcons getting close enough to the point where it was almost a classic old school dogfight. Realizing they were in trouble, the Falcons quickly called their still nearby Strike Eagle comrades for aid.

The F-15Es had hung back in reserve, not wanting to have to prematurely jettison their air to ground ordinance unless it became absolutely necessary. With their fellow USAF pilots in jeopardy, the Strike Eagle crews proceeded to engage the Venezuelan Flankers in BVR (Beyond Visual Range) combat, their data link systems allowing then to shoot missiles at the enemy planes with very minimal risk of hitting their comrades. For the first time history, the US made Eagle and the Russian made Flanker clashed.

The actions of the Eagles turned the tide of the fight though. The remaining Su-30s of Air Group 11 fought back as best they could but were now effectively out of tricks and began dropping like flies. Thanks to the efforts of pilot Julio Vargas & WSO Omar Huertas, one more F-16 would be shot down (piloted by Lt. Kyle Hazel who was captured) but that was about it.

But before the dogfight was over, there would be one final surprise. In the confusion, the last surviving Flanker of Group 11, flown by Capt. Gregori Escalante and backseater Lt. Jose Almeida, managed to slip directly behind an F-15E.

Capt. Ray Nealy, the F-16 pilot who'd earlier shot down Lamas and de Pablo, noticed this. He had already used both his AMRAAMs and was too far away to use his heatseeking Sidewinders. In a slight panic, and not knowing the endangered Strike Eagle's callsign in the heat of the moment, Nealy called out over the frequency: “F-15, break right! Break right!”

It was already too late. Escalante acquired a lock and fired two heatseeking R-73 Archers. The Strike Eagle's pilot, Capt. Ken Williams, jettisoned his tank and bombs, popped flares and desperately tried to evade but to no avail. The F-15 was torn apart and Williams and his WSO, Lt. Billy Spenser, ejected and were later captured.

Just as he'd dreamed, Capt. Gregori Escalante had just become the first pilot ever to shoot down am F-15 in combat. He and Lt. Almeada's celebration was short lived though, as mere seconds later, an AMRAAM missile from another Strike Eagle impacted their cockpit, killing them both instantly.

Dogfight over the Amazon:

Meanwhile in the South, the eight F-16As of Air Group 16 moved to confront the incoming Brazilian F-5Es and A-1Ms. Most of the Falcons were each armed with Israeli Python 4 heatseeking missiles but a few had old US AIM-120B radar guided missiles courtesy of the Turks. The F-5s were each armed with both joint South African/native made A-Darter heatseeking missiles and Israeli Derby radar guided missiles.

While not as advanced as the newer C and D variants of AMRAAM, the AIM-120B was still very capable and could just about out range the Brazilian's Derbys. Sure enough, the eight F-16s opened fire with their AMRAAMs at just under forty miles out, before the twelve-ship group of F-5s could get a lock with their own long range missiles.

Brazilian fighter pilots were still among the best trained in Latin America though. Every single F-5 managed to the defeat the AIM-120 that had been fired at them. But they were now on the defensive, and the F-16s, having now fired all of their long range missiles, lit their blowers (afterburners) and attempted to close to within heatseeker range before the Brazilians could recover.

Two Falcons, piloted by First Lieutenants Hugo Aciveda and Jorge Torrioz, would break off from the main group, using the chaos as a distraction to get to the more vulnerable A-1s tailing behind the F-5s.

Realizing what was happening, the A-1 Ghibi pilots called for aid and attempted to take evasive action. They were not capable of outrunning the F-16s, and while they were equipped with native made MAA-1B Piranha heatseeking missiles for defense, said missile had a very short range. They were pretty much sitting ducks when Aciveda and Torrioz reached them.

Aciveda managed to shoot down two of the scattered Ghiblis while Torrioz accounted for one himself. Both Venezuelans were then shot down as another group of Brazilian F-5s had moved in to aid their comrades. The other six Venezuelan Falcons held their own pretty well, despite being outnumbered. They were able to shoot down four F-5s before before eventually being overwhelmed and taken out themselves.

Of the eight F-16 pilots of Group 16 who went up to challenge the Brazilians that morning, all but two would perish. Only 1st Lt. Torrioz and Capt. Miguel Cuellar would safely eject. By contrast, only one of the seven Brazilian pilots who were shot down failed to eject and was killed.

Capt. Cuellar was not one of the Falcon pilots that shot down an F-5 and could not recall who in his flight that did. There were also no recordings of the radio chatter from the Venezuelan side of dogfight and none of the F-16s carried black boxes. Therefore, we will likely never know for sure which of the other five Venezuelan pilots were F-5 killers.

Once on the ground, Torrioz and Cuellar were both on their own. They had landed in the middle of a jungle and their own military was in no position to help them. Wounded, confident that he'd done his job and in no mood to die, Cuellar used his emergency radio to link up with and effectively surrender to the four downed F-5 pilots. The five of them, along with the two surviving A-1 pilots, were all later picked up by a Brazilian Army helicopter.

Torrioz on the other hand, was not yet ready to give up. His compass didn't survive the ejection and dense foliage and cloud cover make it nearly impossible to tell for sure which direction the sun was setting. But despite the odds stacked against him, he was determined to make it back to civilization on his own.

He was lost in the jungle for weeks, barely keeping himself alive thanks to his military survival training, but would later injure himself badly in a fall. Miraculously, a group of Yanomami, a local indigenous tribe, would find the Lieutenant in a state of near death, nurse him back to health and eventually guide him back to La Esmeralda... only for the Venezuelan pilot to be captured by Brazilian paratroopers who by then had taken over the settlement.

Air Group 13 over the Eastern front:

F-16 pilots Capt. Ariana Perez and Lt. Rodrigo Tejamas and the ten Su-30 crews of Group 13, having lacked the radar jamming pods of Group 11, decided to try and take a less direct approach, splitting off into pairs. Their tactic was to try and either drive or lure US and coalition aircraft into the kill zones of various friendly surface to air missile batteries. There would still end up being a few notable air to air engagements though.

In an unexpectedly bold move, two Su-30s, with pilots Jorge Francisco and Vladimir Sanchez and WSOs Antonia Blanco and Juan Medina, made a suicide run for the US E-3 AWACS plane that was loitering just over the border in Guyanese airspace. Under the guidance of their own AEW plane, the pair were able to stay just low enough to evade detection until they were about to cross the border.

Both Flankers were intercepted and shot down by Canadian CF-18 Hornet pilots Chad Perot and Nazanin Ahmad (Canada's first air to air kills since World War II), but not before they'd managed to unload most of their Adder missiles at the E-3, one of which ended up damaging the AWACS's radar dish. Francisco, Sanchez, Blanco and Medina all managed to eject safely. The now useless E-3 was forced to withdraw, temporarily leaving the coalition planes over Eastern Venezuela with significantly less situational awareness until a replacement could be tasked.

Ariana and her wingman would end up in a brief but tense two on two dogfight with Canadian CF-18 pilots Roger Dukeman and Issac Stoner. With the AWACS out of action, the two F-16s were able to get the drop on the two Canadian Hornets and unload on them with their Turkish AMRAAMs.

Still, Capt. Dukeman and Lt. Stoner were well trained pilots and evaded the missiles. By that point however, Capt. Perez and Lt. Tejamas had closed past the minimum engagement range of their own ARAAMs. In the end, Perez managed to shoot Stoner down with a Python IV while Tejamas managed to damage Dukeman's plane, forcing the Canadian pilot to withdraw back to Guyana.

While this was happening, a lone B-1B Lancer, callsign: Wrecker 11, had suffered an error with it's targeting computer. The pilot and aircraft commander, Capt. Derek Watts, decided to loiter outside the operations area, Southeast of Tobago, while his two systems officers attempted to correct the error. While loitering, Wrecker 11 came within range of the Brazilian frigate Prestigio.

All military aircraft turn off their basic navigational transponders when going into a war zone and instead rely on their electronic IFF (identify friend or foe) and datalink systems to tell who is who while they're in combat. This particular US bomber was no different.

Unfortunately, in perhaps the single most humiliating blunder of the entire air war, the Brazilian Navy had not configured their radar systems to recognize US Air Force IFFs, and no one of higher rank on either military's end had double checked beforehand. If that wasn't bad enough, it also turned out that while the US Navy had made sure set up a proper communications system with the Brazilian Navy in the lead up to the operation, the US Air Force had not. Again, no one of higher rank on either military's end had double checked.

With no way to recognize the Lancer as friendly, and still on edge from the action they'd seen at Courantyne, the crew of the Prestigio assumed the US bomber was hostile and launched three Aspide surface to air missiles at it.

Capt. Watts and co-pilot Lt. Abe Marshall immediately popped chaff and took evasive action, eventually defeating the missiles. In the process however, they'd inadvertently stumbled into the engagement zone of one of Venezuela's still operational S-300 batteries. It had not been knocked out yet by SEAD aircraft.

“We weren't entirely sure what kind of plane we were shooting at, but we knew it wasn't one of ours, we knew it was big and we knew it was too agile to be a passenger jet. We therefore concluded that it was some kind of heavy or medium bomber, so we hit it with everything we had.”

-Tech Sergeant Luis Catracha, S-300 co-operator

The S-300 fired a total of eight 9A83M missiles at Wrecker 11. Through expert piloting, Watts and Marshall were able to defeat seven of the the missiles, but the last one detonated by proximity fuse right behind the bomber, knocking out two of it's four General Electric F101 engines.

Their bird wounded, but still flying, Capt. Watts and his crew made a b-line for the Northeast, hoping to reach the protective net of the USS Theodore Roosevelt's carrier group. Though it was now out of firing range, the S-300's crew still had the wounded bomber on their radar, and they relayed it's location to the nearest Venezuelan aircraft. The nearest happened to be Perez and Tejamas.

The two F-16 pilots decided to chase and finish off the Lancer. It would be a one way trip, but then again, going up against the US Air Force in the first place was always going to be one anyway. They lit their blowers and headed Northeast at full speed after Wrecker 11.

Under normal circumstances, the B-1 Lancer might have just been able to outrun the two Falcons, but with half of it's engines gone, that wasn't possible. To make matters worse, Perez and Tejamas weren't even detected at first due to the aforementioned lack of AWACS. This allowed the Venezuelan F-16s to catch up quite a bit before the Theodore Roosevelt's E-2 finally spotted them.

With a flight of F/A-18s now charging at full to help the injured Lancer, Perez and Tejamas managed to get to within a few miles of their intended prey. Watts and Marshall did their best to take evasive action, but their plane's condition made doing so nearly impossible.

Capt. Perez and Lt. Tejamas acquired heatseeking locks and opened fire, both of them launching their last Python 4s. Each of the missiles would end up hitting and with their aircraft now doomed, the crew of Wrecker 11 ejected. This marked the first time a B-1 Lancer was ever lost in combat and both Venezuelan pilots would be given credit for the kill.

“The feeling of being inside a powerful jet fighting for your life with your adrenaline pumping at full force one second and then... hanging from a parachute, exposed to the elements thousands of feet above the sea the next... it's surreal, to say the least. Almost dreamlike. I'd heard stories from others who'd gone through similar experiences, but like many aspects of being a combat pilot, it's something that you really have to go through yourself in order to get what it's like.”

-Capt. Derek Watts

Before the two Venezuelan pilots could celebrate their victory however, both were hit by AMRAAMs fired from a flight of US Super Hornets. Perez managed to punch out safely. It is assumed that Tejamas did not, for his body was never found.

Capt. Watts, Lt. Marshall and the two systems officers of Wrecker 11 hit the sea (which was thankfully calm that morning) in relatively close proximity to each other. After unhooking themselves from their parachutes, they were able to link up and inflate their emergency raft. They would also stumble upon Capt. Perez, who only had a life preserver and no raft. With nowhere else to go, the Venezuelan pilot effectively surrendered to the very enemy combatants she'd just shot down. They'd all be rescued by a US Navy helicopter about an hour later.

One of the last and most famous air to air engagements of that morning would take place over the municipality of Maturin. US Navy EA-18 Growler pilot, Lieutenant Joaquin Morrison, was in the vicinity. His task was to provide electronic warfare support to a flight of F-18Fs as they took out two nearby SAM batteries. The hornets had been delayed though, due to the unexpectedly fierce resistance put up by the Bolivarian Air Force as well other anti-air defenses.

Lt. Morrison was now completely one his own and due to the many previously mentioned strategic planning errors, his current situation was not communicated to him by US/coalition command. Thankfully, the large amount of garbage signals emanating from his Growler's AN/ALQ-218 radar jamming system kept any of the SAMs from getting a proper lock on him. However, the trade off was that everyone still had a pretty good idea of his current location.

Dawn was setting in, there still no established radio contact with the Hornets, only sporadic gargled contact with his E-2 Hawkeye and he was now fast approaching bingo fuel (the point where you need to turn back or risk not having enough fuel to get home). Morrison decided that he was no longer able to complete the mission and headed back to the USS Theodore Roosevelt.

Shortly after calling out over the freq that he was RTB (returning to base), the Lieutenant got a frantic and barely audible call from the E2. There were two Venezuelan Su-30s closing in on him, and no other US fighters in the immediate vicinity.

The two Flankers were respectively piloted by 1st Lt. Ramon Pascal and Lt. Enrique Armas and had Lt. Beatrice Diente and Lt. Diego Vasquez as WSOs. Both planes were also running low on fuel, just as Lt. Morrison Growler was, but Morrison had no way of knowing that.

Not confident that he could outrun the Flankers given his own fuel state (Su-30s are slightly faster than F-18s and EA-18s anyway), Morrison calculated that his best chance for survival was to turn into and engage them. While his Growler looked very much like a Super Hornet, it was most certainly NOT meant to be an air superiority plane. It had no heatseeking missiles and no gun. Two AMRAAM missiles were its only defense.

The Lieutenant targeted the two Venezuelan jets with his AMRAAMs, hoping to take both of them out before they could close to heatseeker range (where his jammers would be no help). After acquiring a radar lock on both Flankers, he fired a one missile at each at about eighteen miles out. Armas and Vasquez were hit and ejected. Pascal and Diente managed to evade the missile however. Morrison's EA-18 was now defenseless.

Other US planes were now rushing to aid him, but they were still several minutes away and the Growler pilot, now unarmed and on the defensive, had to buy time until they got there.

Lt. Pascal, overly excited, prematurely fired both of his heatseeking R-73s at their maximum range, allowing Morrison to defeat them fairly easily with flares. With the R-77s useless at close range and Morrison's jammers preventing a long range radar lock anyway, the Flanker now had only it's 30 mm GSh-30-1 auto cannon with which to engage the Growler.

Morrison and Pascal/Diente then “merged” and became locked in a one circle fight (a turn radius based dogfight in which both planes are attempting to engage each other at gun range from opposite directions). Pascal determinedly kept angling for a shot (he thought he was engaging a Super Hornet that happened to have a really powerful jammer and had no idea that the enemy aircraft was no longer armed), while Morrison desperately just tried to buy himself more time.

Eventually, Lt. Morrison managed to get onto the Su-30's 6 o'clock (if his Growler had a gun, it probably would've been over). But then 1st Lt. Pascal executed a Cobra maneuver (a move in which an airplane flying at moderate speed abruptly raises its nose to a vertical attitude, briefly stalling the plane, then hits the air brakes and drops back to its normal position), causing the Growler pilot to overshoot him and turning the tables once again.

This was the first confirmed use of the maneuver in combat, but it came at a cost. The Flanker (one of the few fighter aircraft in the world capable of pulling a Cobra off) had sacrificed much of it's energy and airspeed performing the move. If Morrison's Growler had a gun, then he might have been able to take advantage, quickly turn around and take the Flanker out before it could regain its momentum. But again, he did not have a gun, so the Lieutenant decided to take this chance and try to flee.

Paskal managed to recover surprisingly quickly and soon reengaged the Growler. The two planes then became locked in a two circle fight (a turn rate based dogfight in which both aircraft are turning in the same direction with the one behind trying get a gun shot and the one in front trying to evade). This resulted in what was effectively a death spiral as the two fairly evenly matched jet fighters got closer and closer to “the deck” (the ground). Eventually, Morrison would either have to crash into the ground, eject, or try to pull out of the two circle and thus risk giving the enemy Flanker a clear shot at his six.

Either one of the first two options would pretty much still count as a win for the Venezuelan plane, so Lt. Morrison instead opted to take the risky third option. Just seconds away from hitting a building, he pulled up with the intention of attempting a Split S maneuver (rolling of the aircraft until inverted and then performing a descending half-loop) once he acquired enough altitude. It was a desperate last ditch move that largely depended on luck being on his side.

Luck was not on Morrison's side, as Lt. Paskal had anticipated just such a outcome. As the Growler pulled up, the Venezuelan pilot matched the move and with a clear shot now in site, he squeezed the trigger. Four bursts of 30 mm cannon were fired at US Navy plane, at least one of which hit. With both his engines on fire and his aircraft on the verge of coming apart, Joaquin Morrison ejected.

Pascal and his backseater were elated and the pilot would later declare the moment he saw Morrison punch out of his doomed plane as “the most satisfying moment of my life.” Much of the latter part of the dogfight, including Morrison's ejection as well as the quick little victory aileron roll that Paskal performed afterwards, was caught on camera by a local Maturin resident. The footage was quickly uploaded to online social media and went viral.

Lt. Morrison's Growler thankfully crashed in an empty field outside the city's then abandoned civilian airport, causing no collateral damage. Morrison himself however would continue to live out his bad luck streak, as he was captured and disarmed by local Collectivos (armed pro-regime gang members) immediately after touching the ground. The gang then proceeded to beat him severely until a nearby GNB (Venezuelan National Guard) patrol showed up and intervened.

This intervention may very well have saved the US pilot's life as the Collectios were showing no signs they would let up. A GNB medic treated Morrison's wounds (which were thankfully not life threatening) before he was taken into custody.

Several minutes after the dogfight had concluded, Paskal and Diente's Su-30 which was just about out of fuel at that point, was hit by an ARAAM missile from a US Navy Super Hornet. Both Venezuelans safely ejected, their flaming jet also thankfully not injuring anyone when it crashed. This marked the end of air to air combat in the US/Venezuela War... mostly. There would actually be one more incident several weeks later, but that is a story for another time...

The footage of the dogfight would be among the most famous and widely circulated pieces of video footage of the war. It was also another major boost of morale for the Bolivarian Armed Forces.

It should be noted that in the years following the conflict, Joaquin Morrison would personally meet with the Su-30 crew who shot him down and the crew whom he shot down right beforehand. The five of them remain good friends to this day.

The first day of the war was somewhat of a humiliation for US air power. Throughout the entirety of the First Gulf War, they'd only lost one aircraft in air to air combat with the Iraqi Air Force (the Iraqis claimed two others but those were never proven). The Bolivarian Air Force of Venezuela, despite being far smaller and nowhere near as battle hardened as the Iraqi Air Force was in 1991, was able to shoot down five US planes (including an F-15), seven Brazilian and one Canadian.

“When tensions were really starting to heat up after Cucuta, I remember watching some of the US news media. They had this “expert” on who said that we were completely outmatched and we'd be lucky to shoot down a single enemy plane. Well... we got thirteen. I can't speak for all my fellow pilots, but I'd call that a win.”

-Captain Julio Vargas

In addition, four other US planes, two other Brazilian planes. one British plane and one other Canadian plane would also be shot down that same day. Either by surface to air missiles or by anti-aircraft artillery.

After January 7th:

It would take the better part of a week for US and coalition air forces to suppress and destroy the bulk of Venezuelan's surface to air missile batteries. One more US aircraft, one more British and two more Brazilian would also be lost in the process. A few of the SAM batteries, especially some of the shorter range ones, were deactivated and hidden by the FANB for another day.

Just about every major military base in the country was in ruins. Only some of the bases inside Caracas and a few other metropolitan areas had been been spared due to the likelihood of civilian casualties. As it was, one Tomahawk missile fired at the Puerto Cabello naval base would end up malfunctioning and hitting an apartment complex within the city itself. Forty-three civilians were killed, including twelve children. The incident would further galvanize the Venezuelan public against the US.

Venezuelan Captains Ariana Perez and Miguel Cuellar would spend the remainder of the war in detention centers. As would Lieutenant Joaquin Morrison and the other captured US and coalition pilots.

Back in Washington, US President Michael Dorf and his administration were frustrated. They'd hoped that the Venezuelan FANB and civilian populace would have have broken by now, and possibly even ousted Pres. Jorge Carbello in a coup/popular uprising.

That way US and Brazilian troops could move into the country as part of a “peacekeeping operation” with only meager pockets of resistance to have have to worry about. But that was clearly not happening. Despite their losses, both the FANB and the common citizenry were holding strong.

With the simultaneous war against Iran not going particularly well, and under increasing pressure from his corporate donors who'd long wanted access to Venezuela's vast crude oil reserves, Pres. Dorf considered his options. An all out land invasion would be a blood soaked disaster, but at this point he didn't see any other way to achieve his desired goals, which were: “Take out Carballo,” “acquire more oil” and “win a war.”

And so the President of the United States made his decision. He would launch a full scale ground invasion of Venezuela.

Description

Another amazing commission by Jetfreak-7! A US B-1 Lancer bomber, taken out by two Venezuelan F-16 Fighting Falcons. Two US F/A-18 Super Hornets just barely visible in the distance, clearly too late to save their comrades. How did this happen? You'll have to read to find out! It's far from the only thing that happens in the story below. I'll tell you that much.

This is a continuation of my US/Venezuela War series. Previous entry: The Battle of Courantyne

Prelude:

In the weeks following Cucuta and leading up to the attack on the USS Barker, the Venezuelan Air Force prepared for war as best as it could. The Republic of Turkey, the one member of NATO that still officially recognized the Venezuela's Leftist Bolivarian government as legitimate, would secretly provide them with aid.

The Turkish Air Force's main fighter jet was the US made F-16, and so they provided their Venezuelan trading partners with a decent amount of spare parts on the down low (though not ejector seats, which at the time could not be spared). Even though the Bolivarian Air Force still used old A variants of the Falcon, the extra parts were none the less a massive help. For the past several years they'd only been able to field six operational F-16s (out of their total fleet of twenty) due to the US embargo. Now they could field twelve.

In two especially bold and treacherous moves, Turkey secretly provided a handful of old but still reliable AIM-120B AMRAAM missiles and contracted two retired pilots who'd flown Falcons in their air force to instruct the Venezuelan pilots in NATO air to air combat tactics. This was a direct treaty violation, as the Turks were well aware that the Venezuelans would very likely use these missiles and tactics against other member nations of NATO in the near future.

Neither of the Turkish pilots used their real names and both stayed almost exclusively within the confines of El Libertador Air Base during their four week tenure in Venezuela. Plain clothes agents of the Venezuelan General Directorate of Military Intelligence (DGIM) kept a close watch on them the entire time and the two even wore ski masks while they gave lectures to the Bolivarian pilots.

To this day, the identity of the two Turks has never been revealed. All that is known for sure about them is that they were both male, both of average height and both fluent in Spanish. They were hired by a private mercenary firm, supposedly on secret orders form the Turkish government. There was enough plausible deniability to prevent the government connections from ever being proven.

Regardless, all of the Su-30 and F-16 pilots of the Venezuelan Air Force would learn a great deal from the Turkish lectures. They would also get a couple of weeks to actually try the newly learned tactics out in the air with mock dogfights against each other.

Another major boon for Venezuela was the Islamic Republic of Iran. Despite also being under siege by the US, the Iranians still sent a fairly large amount of military personnel and equipment to the Bolivarian Republic. This included several units of the Mersad, Ya Zahra, and Raad surface to air missile systems, plus two long range Talaash batteries. This would bolster Venezuela's own Russian made Pechora, Buk, and Tor systems as well as their three long range S-300 missile systems.

The Iranians also still used a lot of the same Russian missile systems the FANB did, and had a very large surplus of missiles for them. They therefore brought a sizable amount of said Russian missiles to help keep the Venezuelans stocked. Additionally, several hundred fighters from the Quds Force, the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps's elite and infamous unconventional warfare division, were also sent over. There were already fears of a full on US land invasion following the air strikes so any extra bodies on the ground would be a big help.

The Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces sent Venezuela some radar guided 9K33 Osas and inferred guided 9K35 Strelas. Both were highly mobile short range low altitude air defense vehicles. Several hundred Cuban infantry, including special forces, were sent in as well.

Finally, the Volker Group, a paramilitary contractor (officially a privately owned organization but unofficially under direct supervision of the Russian government), sent several thousand highly equipped fighters to Venezuela. They even brought a few dozen 2K22M1 Tunguskas with them, which were a mobile combination of both a self-propelled anti-aircraft gun and short range surface to air missile battery. They would be held back in reserve though, in case the US went all the way and did a full on ground invasion.

In the final days leading up to the war, the FANB (Venezuelan military an a whole), Iranian and Cuban forces quickly mapped out the best places in the country where their SAM batteries would be the most tactically effective. The systems were then rushed to those locations as clandestinely as possible in the hopes of throwing off US satellites.

The Venezuelan Air Force also dispersed its fighter jets. Air Group 11, the eleven Su-30 Flankers under Col. Javiar Lamas who'd attacked the Barker, would remain at El Libertador in Palo Negro (they were also the Air Force's only fighter group equipped with electronic radar jamming pods). The ten Flankers in Air Group 13 would be stationed at Luis del Valle Garcia Air Base in the coastal city of Barcelona.

Eight of the twelve F-16As of Air Group 16 would be set up at Cacique Guaicaipuro Air Base in the remote town of La Esmeralda, Amazonas State. It was the Bolivarian Air Force's Southern most base, abandoned years ago and just refurbished in recent months. The local townsfolk were understandably none too happy about this, as their otherwise backwater community would now become a military target.

The small Southern base had no room for the other four Falcons, so they were divided among the other groups. The two flown by Capt. Ariana Perez and Lt. Rodrigo Tejamas would join with Group 13 at Valle Garcia. The other two, flown by Majors Miguel Soros and Vito Esperanza, both just recently brought out of retirement, would join Group 11 at El Libertador.

The Venezuelans also had an old Dassault Falcon 20 and two old Fairchild C-26 Metroliners for AEW (airborne early warning), the three making up Air Group 86, but they were all using long outdated radar systems. None the less, the three took off from their respective bases on the night of January 6th, their crews doing the best they could to monitor the skies in and around the country.

In the pre-dawn hours of January 7th, 2020, as the most powerful military in human history bared down on them, the various pilots and backseaters of the Bolivarian Air Force of Venezuela said their prayers. Military chaplains spoke with them as well, effectively giving them their last rites.

There was no denying the overwhelming odds against them. There was no denying the fact that the US Air Force and Navy could not actually be stopped. Nearly all of them had resigned themselves to the fact that they were probably about to die. All they could hope for is that they'd take at least a few enemy planes out with them.

“I don't know about the rest of you,” Captain and Cucuta Incident veteran Gregori Escalante quipped in the El Libertador briefing room once the prayers were finished, “but I REALLY want to shoot down an F-15.”

The Captain's attempt to lighten the mood was only moderately successful, but his own relatively high spirits would not be quelled. The US made F-15 Eagle fighter jet and its multi-role strike variant had dominated the world's skies for decades. Not a single one had ever been lost in combat. If Capt. Escalante was going to die today, then he was determined to go out as an Eagle killer. His backseat WSO, Lt. Jose Almeida was right behind him, both literally AND figuratively.

Then word was received from Cuban intelligence. The US fleet was about to begin launching cruise missiles at Venezuela and it was now or never for the Bolivarian Air Force planes to take off.

Despite the lack of hope that most of them still felt, the forty-two Su-30 pilots and weapons systems officers, and the twelve F-16 pilots all suited up, got in their respective planes, taxied onto their runways and took off without hesitation. There had been no time to do pre-flight checks, so the Bolvarian pilots simply had to have faith that their vastly undermanned and overworked crews of mechanics had done everything right.

Just minutes after the last Venezuelan jet got airborne, Operation “Latin Freedom” officially commenced and US destroyers in the Caribbean began launching Tomahawk cruise missiles at El Libertador and other military bases. Additional missiles would be fired by B-52 Stratofortress and B-1 Lancer bombers.

Also, the Brazilian Army would test out their brand new domestically made long range AV-TM 300 Matador cruise missile on Cacique Guaicaipuro. Launched from just over the border, the Matadors hammered the backwater air base, cratering the runway and killing multiple Air Force personnel. A few missiles landed in the surrounding town as well, resulting in civilian casualties.

Back in the North, the combined effort of the Venezuelan and Iranian air defense batteries were able to shoot down a surprisingly large amount of Tomahawks. Many still got through though, devastating El Libertador, the main Bolivarian Naval base at Puerto Cabello and many other military facilities.

While this was going on, the US Navy's Nimitz class aircraft carriers USS George Washington, USS Carl Vinson and USS Theodore Roosevelt began launching their planes. F/A-18 Super Hornets of the one-seat E and two-seat F variants backed up EA-18 Growlers for electronic warfare support. Several E-2 Hawkeye AEW planes were also in the skies over the Caribbean in order to provide the Hornets with a much longer range situational awareness.

Additionally, US Air Force F-15E Strike Eagles from the 4th Fighter Wing and F-16C Falcons from 20th Fighter Wing took off from Pedro Ospina Air Base in Plato, Colombia. An E-3 Sentry AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System) aircraft would guide them in and out.

From a UK Royal Air Force airfield in Western Guyana (built in recent years as part of a new found strategic partnership between the UK and Guyana), RAF Eurofighter Typhoon FGR4s of the No. 6 Squadron and Royal Canadian Air Force CF-18A Hornets from the 401 and 425 Tactical Fighter Squadrons also took off. Another US E-3 Sentry was assigned to them as well.

And of course, from the air base at Boa Vista, Brazilian F-5FM Tiger IIs from the 1/1, 1/4, 1/14 and 2/1 Air Groups and AMX A-1M Ghibis from 1/10 and 3/10 air groups took off and headed Northwest. Although older than Venezuela's Falcons, the Brazilians had spent a lot of time and resources in recent years modernizing their Tiger II fleet, giving them improved avionics and extra weapons pylons to carry more ordinance. The F-5s were still light fighters however, not designed for long range missions, so they had to be refueled in-flight by KC-767 aerial tankers before they entered enemy air space.

In stark contrast to many recent large scale US led air operations such as Desert Storm (the First Gulf War) or Odyssey Dawn (the NATO intervention in Libya), “Latin Freedom” had been severely rushed by the Michael Dorf administration. The pilots of the coalition had received minimal intelligence on the Bolivarian Armed Forces' capabilities and been given very little time to plan their missions. This resulted in many errors and oversights being made. Errors and oversights that the Venezuelan and allied forces (all of which had been attentively observing US military operations for years) would be able to exploit.

Air Group 11 over the Western front:

Not wanting to risk being mistaken for an enemy plane, Majors Soros and Esperanza broke off from Air Group 11 and headed North towards the coastline in their F-16As. The two would end up getting into their famous dogfight with US F/A-18 pilots Gary Yuen and Laura Heidelberg over the Paraguana Peninsula. Soros and Esperanza would both be shot down (with only Soros surviving), and Heidelberg would become the first female US fighter pilot ever to score an air to air kill.

The eleven Su-30s of Group 11 moved to engage the first wave of USAF aircraft coming in from the West, which was an eight-ship flight of F-16Cs with a six-ship flight of F-15Es not far behind them. The F-16s were “Wild Weasels.” Their primary task was to destroy or suppress Venezuelan anti-air defenses but they were equipped to deal with enemy fighters as well.

The two enemy air groups slowly closed on each other, both spread out in a combat formation. The US pilots were initially taken aback by the tenacity and discipline of their Venezuelan adversaries. They'd expected to encounter at most a few small scattered groups of enemy fighters. They most certainly hadn't expected an entire wall of Venezuelan planes to confront them directly.

As the Flankers and Falcons got closer, the respective pilots/crews of each group coordinated with each other to make sure no one attacked the same target. Both groups also increased speed in order to give their long range missiles as much kinetic energy as possible. The Flankers' R-77 Adder missiles had a shorter range and were less reliable than the AIM-120C AMRAAMs the US planes used.

The US F-16s fired first at about thirty-five miles out with their AMRAAMs. To the Falcon pilots' astonishment, the Venezuelan jets held formation for few more moments, determined to get every last bit of kinetic energy the could for their Adders. The Su-30s then fired at about about twenty-eight miles out.

Both air groups took evasive action and the F-16s were forced to prematurely drop their external fuel tanks and air to ground munitions (the latter of course not yet armed). The Su-30 pilots did a surprisingly good job evading the US missiles, in large part thanks to the the techniques passed on to them by the Turks as well as their SAP-518 radar jamming pods. The US pilots were even better trained though and had jamming pods of their own.

Only one plane on each side was shot down in the opening salvos. On the US side was F-16 pilot Jordan Malinowski, the kill credited to Su-30 pilot Eddie Navarro and WSO Pedro Juarez. Malinowski managed to eject safely and land in Colombian territory, though he nearly drowned after landing in the middle of a bog. A passing squad of Colombian soldiers were thankfully able to get him out.

On the Venezuelan side, the Flanker flown by Col. Lamas and Maj. de Pablo was shot down, the kill credited to F-16 pilot Ray Nealy. Lamas and de Pablo both ejected, but the former was mortally wounded by shrapnel from the missile hit. Lamas sadly bled out and was dead before he hit ground. De Pablo would not find his body until well after sunup.

Another F-16, this one flown by Lt. Rebecca Mok, would also suffer from terrible luck. After having managed to successfully notch and defeat the R-77 missile that was fired at her, Mok was flying exceptionally low and inadvertently stumbled into the engagement zone of a Cuban Osa. The Osa (commonly referred to as a “Gecko” by NATO militaries) then preceded to fire an 9M33M3 missile at the low flying F-16 which hit.

Lt. Mok quickly ejected, just barely high enough so that her parachute could open fully before she hit the ground. Before she could unhook her chute and get her bearings however, she was apprehended by a Bolivarian militia patrol. The Lieutenant became the first US prisoner to be taken during the conflict. This incident also marked the first time an 9K33 Osa successfully shot down a jet aircraft in combat.

Back in the air, the situation was quickly turning into a furball, with the Flankers and outnumbered Falcons getting close enough to the point where it was almost a classic old school dogfight. Realizing they were in trouble, the Falcons quickly called their still nearby Strike Eagle comrades for aid.

The F-15Es had hung back in reserve, not wanting to have to prematurely jettison their air to ground ordinance unless it became absolutely necessary. With their fellow USAF pilots in jeopardy, the Strike Eagle crews proceeded to engage the Venezuelan Flankers in BVR (Beyond Visual Range) combat, their data link systems allowing then to shoot missiles at the enemy planes with very minimal risk of hitting their comrades. For the first time history, the US made Eagle and the Russian made Flanker clashed.

The actions of the Eagles turned the tide of the fight though. The remaining Su-30s of Air Group 11 fought back as best they could but were now effectively out of tricks and began dropping like flies. Thanks to the efforts of pilot Julio Vargas & WSO Omar Huertas, one more F-16 would be shot down (piloted by Lt. Kyle Hazel who was captured) but that was about it.

But before the dogfight was over, there would be one final surprise. In the confusion, the last surviving Flanker of Group 11, flown by Capt. Gregori Escalante and backseater Lt. Jose Almeida, managed to slip directly behind an F-15E.

Capt. Ray Nealy, the F-16 pilot who'd earlier shot down Lamas and de Pablo, noticed this. He had already used both his AMRAAMs and was too far away to use his heatseeking Sidewinders. In a slight panic, and not knowing the endangered Strike Eagle's callsign in the heat of the moment, Nealy called out over the frequency: “F-15, break right! Break right!”

It was already too late. Escalante acquired a lock and fired two heatseeking R-73 Archers. The Strike Eagle's pilot, Capt. Ken Williams, jettisoned his tank and bombs, popped flares and desperately tried to evade but to no avail. The F-15 was torn apart and Williams and his WSO, Lt. Billy Spenser, ejected and were later captured.

Just as he'd dreamed, Capt. Gregori Escalante had just become the first pilot ever to shoot down am F-15 in combat. He and Lt. Almeada's celebration was short lived though, as mere seconds later, an AMRAAM missile from another Strike Eagle impacted their cockpit, killing them both instantly.

Dogfight over the Amazon:

Meanwhile in the South, the eight F-16As of Air Group 16 moved to confront the incoming Brazilian F-5Es and A-1Ms. Most of the Falcons were each armed with Israeli Python 4 heatseeking missiles but a few had old US AIM-120B radar guided missiles courtesy of the Turks. The F-5s were each armed with both joint South African/native made A-Darter heatseeking missiles and Israeli Derby radar guided missiles.

While not as advanced as the newer C and D variants of AMRAAM, the AIM-120B was still very capable and could just about out range the Brazilian's Derbys. Sure enough, the eight F-16s opened fire with their AMRAAMs at just under forty miles out, before the twelve-ship group of F-5s could get a lock with their own long range missiles.

Brazilian fighter pilots were still among the best trained in Latin America though. Every single F-5 managed to the defeat the AIM-120 that had been fired at them. But they were now on the defensive, and the F-16s, having now fired all of their long range missiles, lit their blowers (afterburners) and attempted to close to within heatseeker range before the Brazilians could recover.

Two Falcons, piloted by First Lieutenants Hugo Aciveda and Jorge Torrioz, would break off from the main group, using the chaos as a distraction to get to the more vulnerable A-1s tailing behind the F-5s.

Realizing what was happening, the A-1 Ghibi pilots called for aid and attempted to take evasive action. They were not capable of outrunning the F-16s, and while they were equipped with native made MAA-1B Piranha heatseeking missiles for defense, said missile had a very short range. They were pretty much sitting ducks when Aciveda and Torrioz reached them.

Aciveda managed to shoot down two of the scattered Ghiblis while Torrioz accounted for one himself. Both Venezuelans were then shot down as another group of Brazilian F-5s had moved in to aid their comrades. The other six Venezuelan Falcons held their own pretty well, despite being outnumbered. They were able to shoot down four F-5s before before eventually being overwhelmed and taken out themselves.

Of the eight F-16 pilots of Group 16 who went up to challenge the Brazilians that morning, all but two would perish. Only 1st Lt. Torrioz and Capt. Miguel Cuellar would safely eject. By contrast, only one of the seven Brazilian pilots who were shot down failed to eject and was killed.

Capt. Cuellar was not one of the Falcon pilots that shot down an F-5 and could not recall who in his flight that did. There were also no recordings of the radio chatter from the Venezuelan side of dogfight and none of the F-16s carried black boxes. Therefore, we will likely never know for sure which of the other five Venezuelan pilots were F-5 killers.

Once on the ground, Torrioz and Cuellar were both on their own. They had landed in the middle of a jungle and their own military was in no position to help them. Wounded, confident that he'd done his job and in no mood to die, Cuellar used his emergency radio to link up with and effectively surrender to the four downed F-5 pilots. The five of them, along with the two surviving A-1 pilots, were all later picked up by a Brazilian Army helicopter.

Torrioz on the other hand, was not yet ready to give up. His compass didn't survive the ejection and dense foliage and cloud cover make it nearly impossible to tell for sure which direction the sun was setting. But despite the odds stacked against him, he was determined to make it back to civilization on his own.

He was lost in the jungle for weeks, barely keeping himself alive thanks to his military survival training, but would later injure himself badly in a fall. Miraculously, a group of Yanomami, a local indigenous tribe, would find the Lieutenant in a state of near death, nurse him back to health and eventually guide him back to La Esmeralda... only for the Venezuelan pilot to be captured by Brazilian paratroopers who by then had taken over the settlement.

Air Group 13 over the Eastern front:

F-16 pilots Capt. Ariana Perez and Lt. Rodrigo Tejamas and the ten Su-30 crews of Group 13, having lacked the radar jamming pods of Group 11, decided to try and take a less direct approach, splitting off into pairs. Their tactic was to try and either drive or lure US and coalition aircraft into the kill zones of various friendly surface to air missile batteries. There would still end up being a few notable air to air engagements though.

In an unexpectedly bold move, two Su-30s, with pilots Jorge Francisco and Vladimir Sanchez and WSOs Antonia Blanco and Juan Medina, made a suicide run for the US E-3 AWACS plane that was loitering just over the border in Guyanese airspace. Under the guidance of their own AEW plane, the pair were able to stay just low enough to evade detection until they were about to cross the border.

Both Flankers were intercepted and shot down by Canadian CF-18 Hornet pilots Chad Perot and Nazanin Ahmad (Canada's first air to air kills since World War II), but not before they'd managed to unload most of their Adder missiles at the E-3, one of which ended up damaging the AWACS's radar dish. Francisco, Sanchez, Blanco and Medina all managed to eject safely. The now useless E-3 was forced to withdraw, temporarily leaving the coalition planes over Eastern Venezuela with significantly less situational awareness until a replacement could be tasked.

Ariana and her wingman would end up in a brief but tense two on two dogfight with Canadian CF-18 pilots Roger Dukeman and Issac Stoner. With the AWACS out of action, the two F-16s were able to get the drop on the two Canadian Hornets and unload on them with their Turkish AMRAAMs.

Still, Capt. Dukeman and Lt. Stoner were well trained pilots and evaded the missiles. By that point however, Capt. Perez and Lt. Tejamas had closed past the minimum engagement range of their own ARAAMs. In the end, Perez managed to shoot Stoner down with a Python IV while Tejamas managed to damage Dukeman's plane, forcing the Canadian pilot to withdraw back to Guyana.

While this was happening, a lone B-1B Lancer, callsign: Wrecker 11, had suffered an error with it's targeting computer. The pilot and aircraft commander, Capt. Derek Watts, decided to loiter outside the operations area, Southeast of Tobago, while his two systems officers attempted to correct the error. While loitering, Wrecker 11 came within range of the Brazilian frigate Prestigio.

All military aircraft turn off their basic navigational transponders when going into a war zone and instead rely on their electronic IFF (identify friend or foe) and datalink systems to tell who is who while they're in combat. This particular US bomber was no different.

Unfortunately, in perhaps the single most humiliating blunder of the entire air war, the Brazilian Navy had not configured their radar systems to recognize US Air Force IFFs, and no one of higher rank on either military's end had double checked beforehand. If that wasn't bad enough, it also turned out that while the US Navy had made sure set up a proper communications system with the Brazilian Navy in the lead up to the operation, the US Air Force had not. Again, no one of higher rank on either military's end had double checked.

With no way to recognize the Lancer as friendly, and still on edge from the action they'd seen at Courantyne, the crew of the Prestigio assumed the US bomber was hostile and launched three Aspide surface to air missiles at it.

Capt. Watts and co-pilot Lt. Abe Marshall immediately popped chaff and took evasive action, eventually defeating the missiles. In the process however, they'd inadvertently stumbled into the engagement zone of one of Venezuela's still operational S-300 batteries. It had not been knocked out yet by SEAD aircraft.

“We weren't entirely sure what kind of plane we were shooting at, but we knew it wasn't one of ours, we knew it was big and we knew it was too agile to be a passenger jet. We therefore concluded that it was some kind of heavy or medium bomber, so we hit it with everything we had.”

-Tech Sergeant Luis Catracha, S-300 co-operator

The S-300 fired a total of eight 9A83M missiles at Wrecker 11. Through expert piloting, Watts and Marshall were able to defeat seven of the the missiles, but the last one detonated by proximity fuse right behind the bomber, knocking out two of it's four General Electric F101 engines.

Their bird wounded, but still flying, Capt. Watts and his crew made a b-line for the Northeast, hoping to reach the protective net of the USS Theodore Roosevelt's carrier group. Though it was now out of firing range, the S-300's crew still had the wounded bomber on their radar, and they relayed it's location to the nearest Venezuelan aircraft. The nearest happened to be Perez and Tejamas.

The two F-16 pilots decided to chase and finish off the Lancer. It would be a one way trip, but then again, going up against the US Air Force in the first place was always going to be one anyway. They lit their blowers and headed Northeast at full speed after Wrecker 11.

Under normal circumstances, the B-1 Lancer might have just been able to outrun the two Falcons, but with half of it's engines gone, that wasn't possible. To make matters worse, Perez and Tejamas weren't even detected at first due to the aforementioned lack of AWACS. This allowed the Venezuelan F-16s to catch up quite a bit before the Theodore Roosevelt's E-2 finally spotted them.

With a flight of F/A-18s now charging at full to help the injured Lancer, Perez and Tejamas managed to get to within a few miles of their intended prey. Watts and Marshall did their best to take evasive action, but their plane's condition made doing so nearly impossible.

Capt. Perez and Lt. Tejamas acquired heatseeking locks and opened fire, both of them launching their last Python 4s. Each of the missiles would end up hitting and with their aircraft now doomed, the crew of Wrecker 11 ejected. This marked the first time a B-1 Lancer was ever lost in combat and both Venezuelan pilots would be given credit for the kill.

“The feeling of being inside a powerful jet fighting for your life with your adrenaline pumping at full force one second and then... hanging from a parachute, exposed to the elements thousands of feet above the sea the next... it's surreal, to say the least. Almost dreamlike. I'd heard stories from others who'd gone through similar experiences, but like many aspects of being a combat pilot, it's something that you really have to go through yourself in order to get what it's like.”

-Capt. Derek Watts

Before the two Venezuelan pilots could celebrate their victory however, both were hit by AMRAAMs fired from a flight of US Super Hornets. Perez managed to punch out safely. It is assumed that Tejamas did not, for his body was never found.

Capt. Watts, Lt. Marshall and the two systems officers of Wrecker 11 hit the sea (which was thankfully calm that morning) in relatively close proximity to each other. After unhooking themselves from their parachutes, they were able to link up and inflate their emergency raft. They would also stumble upon Capt. Perez, who only had a life preserver and no raft. With nowhere else to go, the Venezuelan pilot effectively surrendered to the very enemy combatants she'd just shot down. They'd all be rescued by a US Navy helicopter about an hour later.

One of the last and most famous air to air engagements of that morning would take place over the municipality of Maturin. US Navy EA-18 Growler pilot, Lieutenant Joaquin Morrison, was in the vicinity. His task was to provide electronic warfare support to a flight of F-18Fs as they took out two nearby SAM batteries. The hornets had been delayed though, due to the unexpectedly fierce resistance put up by the Bolivarian Air Force as well other anti-air defenses.

Lt. Morrison was now completely one his own and due to the many previously mentioned strategic planning errors, his current situation was not communicated to him by US/coalition command. Thankfully, the large amount of garbage signals emanating from his Growler's AN/ALQ-218 radar jamming system kept any of the SAMs from getting a proper lock on him. However, the trade off was that everyone still had a pretty good idea of his current location.

Dawn was setting in, there still no established radio contact with the Hornets, only sporadic gargled contact with his E-2 Hawkeye and he was now fast approaching bingo fuel (the point where you need to turn back or risk not having enough fuel to get home). Morrison decided that he was no longer able to complete the mission and headed back to the USS Theodore Roosevelt.

Shortly after calling out over the freq that he was RTB (returning to base), the Lieutenant got a frantic and barely audible call from the E2. There were two Venezuelan Su-30s closing in on him, and no other US fighters in the immediate vicinity.

The two Flankers were respectively piloted by 1st Lt. Ramon Pascal and Lt. Enrique Armas and had Lt. Beatrice Diente and Lt. Diego Vasquez as WSOs. Both planes were also running low on fuel, just as Lt. Morrison Growler was, but Morrison had no way of knowing that.

Not confident that he could outrun the Flankers given his own fuel state (Su-30s are slightly faster than F-18s and EA-18s anyway), Morrison calculated that his best chance for survival was to turn into and engage them. While his Growler looked very much like a Super Hornet, it was most certainly NOT meant to be an air superiority plane. It had no heatseeking missiles and no gun. Two AMRAAM missiles were its only defense.

The Lieutenant targeted the two Venezuelan jets with his AMRAAMs, hoping to take both of them out before they could close to heatseeker range (where his jammers would be no help). After acquiring a radar lock on both Flankers, he fired a one missile at each at about eighteen miles out. Armas and Vasquez were hit and ejected. Pascal and Diente managed to evade the missile however. Morrison's EA-18 was now defenseless.

Other US planes were now rushing to aid him, but they were still several minutes away and the Growler pilot, now unarmed and on the defensive, had to buy time until they got there.

Lt. Pascal, overly excited, prematurely fired both of his heatseeking R-73s at their maximum range, allowing Morrison to defeat them fairly easily with flares. With the R-77s useless at close range and Morrison's jammers preventing a long range radar lock anyway, the Flanker now had only it's 30 mm GSh-30-1 auto cannon with which to engage the Growler.

Morrison and Pascal/Diente then “merged” and became locked in a one circle fight (a turn radius based dogfight in which both planes are attempting to engage each other at gun range from opposite directions). Pascal determinedly kept angling for a shot (he thought he was engaging a Super Hornet that happened to have a really powerful jammer and had no idea that the enemy aircraft was no longer armed), while Morrison desperately just tried to buy himself more time.

Eventually, Lt. Morrison managed to get onto the Su-30's 6 o'clock (if his Growler had a gun, it probably would've been over). But then 1st Lt. Pascal executed a Cobra maneuver (a move in which an airplane flying at moderate speed abruptly raises its nose to a vertical attitude, briefly stalling the plane, then hits the air brakes and drops back to its normal position), causing the Growler pilot to overshoot him and turning the tables once again.

This was the first confirmed use of the maneuver in combat, but it came at a cost. The Flanker (one of the few fighter aircraft in the world capable of pulling a Cobra off) had sacrificed much of it's energy and airspeed performing the move. If Morrison's Growler had a gun, then he might have been able to take advantage, quickly turn around and take the Flanker out before it could regain its momentum. But again, he did not have a gun, so the Lieutenant decided to take this chance and try to flee.

Paskal managed to recover surprisingly quickly and soon reengaged the Growler. The two planes then became locked in a two circle fight (a turn rate based dogfight in which both aircraft are turning in the same direction with the one behind trying get a gun shot and the one in front trying to evade). This resulted in what was effectively a death spiral as the two fairly evenly matched jet fighters got closer and closer to “the deck” (the ground). Eventually, Morrison would either have to crash into the ground, eject, or try to pull out of the two circle and thus risk giving the enemy Flanker a clear shot at his six.

Either one of the first two options would pretty much still count as a win for the Venezuelan plane, so Lt. Morrison instead opted to take the risky third option. Just seconds away from hitting a building, he pulled up with the intention of attempting a Split S maneuver (rolling of the aircraft until inverted and then performing a descending half-loop) once he acquired enough altitude. It was a desperate last ditch move that largely depended on luck being on his side.

Luck was not on Morrison's side, as Lt. Paskal had anticipated just such a outcome. As the Growler pulled up, the Venezuelan pilot matched the move and with a clear shot now in site, he squeezed the trigger. Four bursts of 30 mm cannon were fired at US Navy plane, at least one of which hit. With both his engines on fire and his aircraft on the verge of coming apart, Joaquin Morrison ejected.

Pascal and his backseater were elated and the pilot would later declare the moment he saw Morrison punch out of his doomed plane as “the most satisfying moment of my life.” Much of the latter part of the dogfight, including Morrison's ejection as well as the quick little victory aileron roll that Paskal performed afterwards, was caught on camera by a local Maturin resident. The footage was quickly uploaded to online social media and went viral.

Lt. Morrison's Growler thankfully crashed in an empty field outside the city's then abandoned civilian airport, causing no collateral damage. Morrison himself however would continue to live out his bad luck streak, as he was captured and disarmed by local Collectivos (armed pro-regime gang members) immediately after touching the ground. The gang then proceeded to beat him severely until a nearby GNB (Venezuelan National Guard) patrol showed up and intervened.

This intervention may very well have saved the US pilot's life as the Collectios were showing no signs they would let up. A GNB medic treated Morrison's wounds (which were thankfully not life threatening) before he was taken into custody.

Several minutes after the dogfight had concluded, Paskal and Diente's Su-30 which was just about out of fuel at that point, was hit by an ARAAM missile from a US Navy Super Hornet. Both Venezuelans safely ejected, their flaming jet also thankfully not injuring anyone when it crashed. This marked the end of air to air combat in the US/Venezuela War... mostly. There would actually be one more incident several weeks later, but that is a story for another time...

The footage of the dogfight would be among the most famous and widely circulated pieces of video footage of the war. It was also another major boost of morale for the Bolivarian Armed Forces.

It should be noted that in the years following the conflict, Joaquin Morrison would personally meet with the Su-30 crew who shot him down and the crew whom he shot down right beforehand. The five of them remain good friends to this day.

The first day of the war was somewhat of a humiliation for US air power. Throughout the entirety of the First Gulf War, they'd only lost one aircraft in air to air combat with the Iraqi Air Force (the Iraqis claimed two others but those were never proven). The Bolivarian Air Force of Venezuela, despite being far smaller and nowhere near as battle hardened as the Iraqi Air Force was in 1991, was able to shoot down five US planes (including an F-15), seven Brazilian and one Canadian.

“When tensions were really starting to heat up after Cucuta, I remember watching some of the US news media. They had this “expert” on who said that we were completely outmatched and we'd be lucky to shoot down a single enemy plane. Well... we got thirteen. I can't speak for all my fellow pilots, but I'd call that a win.”

-Captain Julio Vargas

In addition, four other US planes, two other Brazilian planes. one British plane and one other Canadian plane would also be shot down that same day. Either by surface to air missiles or by anti-aircraft artillery.

After January 7th:

It would take the better part of a week for US and coalition air forces to suppress and destroy the bulk of Venezuelan's surface to air missile batteries. One more US aircraft, one more British and two more Brazilian would also be lost in the process. A few of the SAM batteries, especially some of the shorter range ones, were deactivated and hidden by the FANB for another day.

Just about every major military base in the country was in ruins. Only some of the bases inside Caracas and a few other metropolitan areas had been been spared due to the likelihood of civilian casualties. As it was, one Tomahawk missile fired at the Puerto Cabello naval base would end up malfunctioning and hitting an apartment complex within the city itself. Forty-three civilians were killed, including twelve children. The incident would further galvanize the Venezuelan public against the US.

Venezuelan Captains Ariana Perez and Miguel Cuellar would spend the remainder of the war in detention centers. As would Lieutenant Joaquin Morrison and the other captured US and coalition pilots.

Back in Washington, US President Michael Dorf and his administration were frustrated. They'd hoped that the Venezuelan FANB and civilian populace would have have broken by now, and possibly even ousted Pres. Jorge Carbello in a coup/popular uprising.

That way US and Brazilian troops could move into the country as part of a “peacekeeping operation” with only meager pockets of resistance to have have to worry about. But that was clearly not happening. Despite their losses, both the FANB and the common citizenry were holding strong.

With the simultaneous war against Iran not going particularly well, and under increasing pressure from his corporate donors who'd long wanted access to Venezuela's vast crude oil reserves, Pres. Dorf considered his options. An all out land invasion would be a blood soaked disaster, but at this point he didn't see any other way to achieve his desired goals, which were: “Take out Carballo,” “acquire more oil” and “win a war.”

And so the President of the United States made his decision. He would launch a full scale ground invasion of Venezuela.